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Most people are complete morons when it comes to anything they don't have to deal with on a day to day basis. They know what they need to know to continue existing any maybe they know or learn enough to get ahead but beyond that people are generally ignorant and clueless to their ignorance.

For example, I personally have a stake in the gun control issue. I'm against "banning assault weapons" because I'm against a bunch of bureaucrats having a chance to define "assault weapon" because last time we gave them a chance they banned a bunch of things that make firearms look scary. Ditto for background checks but to a lesser extent. Existing implementations suck, a lot. The same goes for tougher laws in general, they don't seem to have done much of anything for the positive and there's anecdotal evidence they may be negative (look up some of the pro-gun number crunching exercises f you want an example). Why would I or anyone else who wants to go to the range want to encourage more of this? We see it as the firearm equivalent of security theater.

However people who aren't well informed on the details have had these two carrots danged in front of them as a cure to a problem in our society and they'd be fools not to reach for them when they're framed in that context. Meanwhile they can't be bothered to wonder why anyone wouldn't want these things. After all, some poll says $large_percent of people support $thing, yet they can't be arsed to even wonder why that $small_percent is holding out.

You find this sort of problem on both sides of any controversial issue.